Please bear with me for the history- I have a home build PC gigabyte ud3p board, P4 3.17 dual core, 8gb ram, 700 watt new PS 6 months ago my computer started random freezes followed by rapid cycling on-off without booting. I would unplug, wait a while (30 minutes or so), and then the computer would work fine until the next freeze. Freezes started increasing in frequency from one every other week, to every week, to every day..etc.. Due to the weird cycling on-off after a reboot, I replaced the PS, thinking that was the issue. Problem seemed to go away for a month or so. Now, the freezes accelerated more quickly and I am having strange boot problems. Sometimes the system will hang at the initial bios screen, sometimes it will hang at the windows start screen, other times it will work okay for an hour or so, then freeze. Only now, it only boots up again 1 out of 10 times. What could this be? I've been building for a long time, but I admit I am a bit out of practice as my last build lasted me 4 years before it became too old to support newer software. btw - I know the 8gb of ram is useless, but I am upgrading to win7 64 as soon as these probs are solved and so saw no harm in installing it rather than leaving it lying on the desk.

Random hangs and reboots often are a symptom of failing RAM. I would recommend testing the RAM intensively. (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/How-do-I-know-if-my-computer-has-a-memory-problem) Another cause might be a faulty harddrive, harddrive connection or an issue with the motherboard. If the RAM test yields no errors, you can test the disk. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Check-your-hard-disk-for-errors. Unfortunately hardware issues with the motherboard are often very difficult to trace without spare components to test with. Also, take advantage of the built-in diagnostic tools like reliability monitor, the event logs and the "check for solutions" feature in your action center. This will automaticly file all error related logs, events and files to Microsoft. Believe it or not, this very often yields good information on how to solve common issues. good luck in resolving this issue! Regards, Senne MCP/MCSA/MCTS/MCITP

The ram tested fine. I checked the event log and found nothing informative. Many,many entries logged the computer shutting off unexpectedly, often more than four or five for the same shut-off/ freeze event. No errors were found on the hard drive. 'check for solutions' has always been fairly useless - and it did not yield anything in this instance either. I'd be curious to learn if it ever does find a solution when used. I'd appreciate more suggestions for what I can try. I am wonding about the CPU since a number of the freezes (no all, but many) happen when I have an Internet browser open. Thanks-mtrim

In fact "find solutions" is a pretty nice feature which helped me resolve serveral issues before. It works of course ony for "common" issues where Microsoft receives more than a few error-reports. For example it suggested a BSOD was caused by a Ati driver... update and resolved :) You should try to verify whther the issue is in your hardware (most probable) or in the software configuration. If you have no spare parts available, this can be very hard. If in cases like this hardeware is the most probable cause, it often is easier to swap some hardware than doing a full-blown software investigation. You can attempt a clean boot http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796 to check whetehre the pc remains stable in that way.You can also do a clean install and verify whether this gets stable. In these event logs; do they state a .dmp file was created? If so upload it somewhere and put a link in your reply.MCP/MCSA/MCTS/MCITP